MICIUV 

LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALI#OtNIA 


/4 

REPORT 


PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR  KNOWLEDGE 


OP 


LINGUISTIC   ETHNOLOGY, 


MADE   TO   THE 


AMERICAN   ASSOCIATION  TOR   THE   ADVANCEMENT 
OF   SCIENCE, 


AUGUST,    1856, 


BY 


PROFESSOR  S.  S.  HALDEMAN. 


PUBLISHED  FOR  THE  ASSOCIATION, 
BY    JOSEPH    LOVERINO, 

PERMANENT   SECRETARY. 

1856. 

MMMM 


„s£\ 


[After  the  following  Report  was  presented  to  the  Association,  the 
author  was  commissioned  to  continue  the  subject  in  a  further  report, 
4o-be~f>rcsentod  at  Montreal  in  August,  1667,  upon  a  system  of  alpha- 
betic notation  adapted  to  American  and  exotic  languages.  He  would 
therefore  respectfully  ask  the  advice  and  co-operation  of  observers 
and  scholars  who  take  an  interest  in  this  intricate  subject.  Communi- 
cations may  be  addressed  to  him  directly,  at  Columbia,  Pennsylvania, 
or  to  the  care  of  John  Penington  and  Son,  Booksellers,  Philadelphia  ; 
or  to  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington  City.] 


CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALP  AND   COMPANY,  PRINTERS  TO  THE   UNIVERSITY. 


f'zn 

,3 


REPORT. 


This  Report  will  be  restricted  to  the  portion  of  the  subject 
pertaining  to  speech,  —  a  portion  which,  although  less  extensive 
than  the  grammatical,  lexicographical,  or  etymological  portions 
of  language,  has  not  attracted  proper  attention  until  a  recent 
period.  This  neglect  is  due  to  the  difficulty  of  the  subject,  of 
which  a  constant  example  is  at  hand  in  the  difficulty  experi- 
enced in  pronouncing  foreign  languages  properly,  even  when 
they  belong  to  the  same  stock,  as  Persian,  German,  Belgian, 
and  English.  The  difficulty  of  pronouncing,  appreciating, 
locating,  explaining,  and  writing  down  the  various  phases  of 
speech  is  so  great,  and  there  are  so  many  sources  of  error,  that 
we  must  be  more  cautious  in  accepting  statements  here,  than 
in  other  sciences  of  observation,  few  having  as  much  educa- 
tion in  this  branch  as  would  be  required  to  make  a  chemist  or 
a  musician ;  or  to  enable  a  singer  to  write  down  a  song  prop- 
erly, even  in  a  notation  of  his  own  invention.  We  cannot 
even  trust  an  observer  who  claims  for  himself  a  good  ear. 
The  English  lexicographer,  Knowles,  makes  such  a  claim,  and 
by  his  analysis  proves  that  he  does  not  possess  the  power  to 
discriminate  sounds  ;  as  in  the  case  of  ye  and  ivoo,  which  he 
considers  equivalent  to  the  repetitions  e-e  and  00-00.  The  re- 
1 

072 


^  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

porter  is  willing  that  the  objections  which  he  makes  to  the 
results  of  others  should  be  urged  against  his  own ;  and  that 
his  assertions  should  be  received  with  as  much  caution  as 
those  of  any  observer,  having  at  various  times  held  views  which 
further  research  proved  to  be  untenable. 

Spanish  grammarians  emphatically  deny  that  their  b  ever 
partakes  of  the  power  of  English  and  Spanish  v.  They  claim 
both  b  and  v,  and  assert  that  v  (like  /)  is  made  by  the  appli- 
cation of  the  lower  lip  to  the  upper  teeth,  and  that  their  b  is 
never  made  thus,  the  lips  alone  being  concerned  in  its  produc- 
tion, so  that  it  is  impossible  that  it  can  be  anything  else  than 
a  genuine  b.  The  facts  are  as  here  given,  but  the  inference  is 
false.  The  Spanish  b  between  vowels,  the  German  w,  and, 
according  to  E.  A.  Sophocles,  the  Ellenic*  £,  differ  from  Eng- 
lish v  in  being  formed  with  the  lips  alone.  It  is  therefore  an 
aspirate  of  b  (C-B)  as  the  Greek  <f>  is  an  aspirate  of  p^  which  / 
is  not.  This  is  an  important  point  in  ethnology,  which  few 
attend  to.  Doctor  Lepsius  does  not  allude  to  it,  nor  to  the 
very  distinct  Russian  vowel  bl,  in  his  recently  published  Stand- 
ard Alphabet.  Authors  continually  confound  English  labio- 
dental v  with  German  labial  w,  and  in  giving  an  account  of 
the  languages  they  investigate,  they  cannot  be  trusted  upon 
this  point;  so  that  we  have  yet  to  learn  which  of  the  two 
sounds  is  present  in  certain  languages,  the  phonology  of  which 
is  apparently  treated  with  great  fulness.  Judging  from  a  par- 
tial investigation,  the  Russian  '  B '  has  the  power  of  English 
and  French  labio-dental  v. 

Some  writers  (as  Le  Brethon  and  Marsden),  in  comparing 
the  French  and  English  vowels,  refer  &  to  that  m/all,  and  e  to 

*  Modern  Greek  is  an  awkward  expression,  and  Romaic  is  incorrect,  and  as  the 
language  has  lost  h,  Hellenic  has  become  Ellenic.  The  word  Anglo-Saxon  is  equally 
awkward,  and  degenerates  into  "  Saxon,"  —  a  name  which  should  be  restricted  to 
Plattdeutsch  in  its  modern  and  ancient  or  old  Saxon  form.  The  change  of  languages 
involves  a  change  of  pronunciation,  as  in  the  German  klar,  which  closes  to  clair  in 
French,  and  still  farther  to  clear  in  English ;  so  the  language  of  Anglia  and  the 
Angles  was  Anglish,  and  passed  through  English,  with  e  in  met,  to  the  modern 
Inglish,  with  the  vowel  in  Jit. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  3 

that  in  end ;  whilst  others  (Picot,  Bolmar,  &c.)  refer  &  to  the 
English  vowel  in  arm,  and  e  to  that  in  fate.  Duponceau,  in 
1817  (Am.  Phil.  Trans.  I.  229),  refers  the  English  vowel  in 
fat  to  the  French  vowel  in  terre,  pere,  an  error  which  Germans 
commonly  make.  In  the  alphabet  of  Lepsius,  fat  would  be 
written  fet,  and  the  French  mere  mer.  Duponceau  seems  to 
have  been  the  first  to  show  that  the  initial  vowel  of  the  Eng- 
lish diphthongs  in  aisle  or  isle,  and  owl,  is  not  that  in  arm,  but 
the  French  a,  which  is  made  with  a  narrower  aperture  than  a 
in  arm  requires,  and  with  a  slight  tendency  towards  awe.  The 
same  author  gives  as  the  components  of  English  u  in  usage,  the 
vowels  of  eel  and  ooze,  —  an  error  which  is  retained  by  most 
English  authors,  very  few  of  whom  know  what  a  diphthong  is. 
Every  vowel  added  to  a  word  forms  an  additional  syllable, 
and  as  English  u  is  a  monosyllable,  one  of  its  elements  is  a 
consonant ;  namely,  the  initial  when  it  is  pronounced  you,  and 
the  final  when,  as  is  sometimes  the  case,  it  is  a  diphthong  pro- 
nounced like  the  Welsh  iw  and  Belgian  iew,  with  the  vowel  of 
it  (German  hitzig)  and  iv  as  a  consonant  in  now,  or  German 
u  in  haus.  Similarly,  the  final  element  of  clo-y  is  a  consonant, 
and  of  claw-y  a  vowel.*  German  and  French  writers  seem 
not  to  be  aware  of  the  nature  of  diphthongs,  and  in  Latin- 
English  grammars  they  are  described  as  vowels.f  In  most 
ethnic  alphabets,  including  that  of  Lepsius,  the  last  element  of 
the  diphthongs  is  represented  by  a  vowel  character,  —  a  fun- 
damental error  founded  upon  the  crude  analysis  of  the  an- 
cients. %     The  term  diphthong  is  itself  almost  useless,  because, 

*  Hald.  Latin  Pronunciation,  §§  109,  111.  Latham's  English  Language,  1841,  p. 
108,  §68. 

t  Andrews  and  Stoddard  consider  the  vowels  of  fall  andyeeJ  diphthongs,  because 
they  pronounce  the  Latin  LAVS  and  AETAS  with  them.  They  say  that  "  two 
vowels  in  immediate  succession  in  the  same  syllable "  (including  UO,  UA !)  "  are 
called  a  diphthong.  Yet  if  AETAS  is  read  with  but  four  elements  instead  of  five 
(the  a  in  arm  being  omitted),  the  word  does  not  contain  "  two  vowels  in  immediate 
succession." 

\  Dr.  Lepsius  assigns  (Standard  Alphabet,  p.  41)  to  the  Latin  diphthong  oe  (oi 
in  going,  when  pronounced  as  a  monosyllable)  the  power  of  the  German  vowel  o,  and' 


4  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

as  the  first  element  is  already  a  vowel,  the  peculiarity  lies  in 
the  second  coalescing  with  the  first,  (an  impossibility  with  a 
second  and  subsequent  vowel,)  whence  it  may  be  called  a 
coalescent,  meaning  by  this  term  those  consonants  that  approx- 
imate as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  vowels. 

In  a  French  work  on  Russian,  the  twenty-ninth  Russian  let- 
ter, b,  is  explained  by  comparing  it  with  the  French  "  e  mute," 
whilst  the  twenty-seventh  letter  is  said  to  have  no  sound,  but 
to  indicate  that  the  preceding  consonant  is  to  be  pronounced 
with  force,  and  as  if  it  were  doubled.  This  gives  a  very  in- 
correct view  of  these  letters.  For  example,  the  Russian  word 
for  Jive  is  a  monosyllable  with  the  short  a  in  mi^  which  might 
be  represented  pj^tj  in  Latin  or  German  letters,  and  pyrfty  in 
English  letters,  the  final  y  being  the  Russian  (b),  and  the  mod- 
ified y-sound  following  I  in  the  French  "11  mouillee."  This 
addition  to  consonants  is  so  common  in  Russian,  that  its  ab- 
sence is  marked  by  the  yerr,  as  in  the  word  o-ke-an  ocean, 
which  is  written  with  the  final  yerr.  The  allusion  to  doubled 
letters  might  cause  Russian  to  be  associated  with  Arabic, 
Latin,  and  Italian,  which  are  among  the  few  languages  which 
have  doubled  or  geminate  elements,  as  in  the  Italian  "  Gio- 
vanni," John,  in  which  each  n  is  as  distinctly  sounded  as  in  the 
English  words  one  name. 

Arabic  has  such  doubled  consonant  sounds ;  yet  it  would 
be  wrong  to  consider  the  sixteenth  Arabic  letter  tta  such  a 
gemination  on  the  authority  of  Richardson,  who  describes  it 
(Grammar,  p.  9)  as  "double  t,  or  t  with  a  slight  aspiration," 
a  description  which  is  void  of  meaning,  the  reader  being  un- 
able to  tell  whether  the  conjunction  is  copulative  or  disjunc- 
tive, and  consequently  whether  the  latter  member  of  the  sen- 
tence is  explanatory  of  the  former.  Brown  (Journey  to  Dar 
Fur)  assigns  to  the  Dar  Runga,  words  like  tta  water,  mmi  wo- 

ignoring  the  Latin  nasal  vowels,  writes  kplum  for  coelum.  The  dots  are  placed  be- 
low o  to  afford  room  above  for  accent  marks,  yet  nasal  vowels  are  indicated  by  ( "  ) 
above,  which  may  call  for  vowel  characters  surmounted  with  the  three  signs  ("  •*  ■*). 
Thus  the  French  word  sans  (saj  is  long,  and  cent  (sa{)  is  short. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  O 

man,  ddSta  mountain,  wwi  wind,  ggo  reprimanding ;  but  as  he 
gives  no  explanation  of  his  notation,  these  are  doubtful  exam- 
ples of  geminate  consonants. 

Many  English  people  fancy  that  they  have  double  conso- 
nants, because  they  spell  certain  words  (e.  g.  all,  well,  off,  lesson, 
back,  annex,  allude)  wTith  double  characters.  This  practice  is 
in  use  to  indicate  a  short  preceding  vowel,  and  when  an  Eng- 
lishman writes  a  Latin  Grammar,  he  is  apt  to  believe  and  as- 
sert that  syllables  which  are  long  "  by  position "  are  really 
short,  but  are  "counted"  or  "considered"  long,  by  a  "me- 
chanical rule "  ;  whereas,  the  doubled  consonants  heard  in 
Italian  show  that  such  syllables  are  really  long,  because  it 
requires  more  time  to  pronounce  two  elements  than  one.* 
Similarly,  Latin  diphthongs  are  long,  not  by  an  arbitrary  rule, 
but  because  the  two  elements  of  AV,  AE,  OE,  &c.  require 
more  time  than  A  and  O  alone. 

The  nasal  vowels  of  but  few  foreign  languages  are  properly 
understood,  and  the  ignorance  of  writers  whose  vernacular 
does  not  contain  them  is  frequently  apparent.  The  error  here 
is  sometimes  so  great,  as  to  cause  a  confusion  between  vowel 
and  consonant,  as  in  mistaking  the  nasal  vowel  of  the  French 
fin  for  the  English  and  German  ng  in  fang.  The  French 
word  fin  contains  but  two  elements,  a  consonant  followed  by 
a  genuine  vowel,  whilst  the  English  fang  has  three  elements, 
and  ends  with  a  consonant.  The  mistaking  one  for  the  other 
would  be  exactly  paralleled  in  the  practice  of  a  foreigner  who 
for  pea  would  give  peag  as  an  English  word. 

This  error  in  regard  to  the  nasals  appears  in  Riggs's  valuable 
Grammar  and  Dictionary  of  the  Dacota  Language,  based  up- 
on the  studies  of  a  number  of  observers  during  a  period  of 
eighteen  years,  and  submitted  to  the  inspection  of  a  learned 
committee  previous  to  its  publication  by  the  Smithsonian  In- 
stitution.   To  a  given  character  the  power  of  'n'  in  the  French 

*  Most  English  grammarians  do  not  distinguish  between  the  length  and  the 
quality  of  their  own  vowels,  regarding  a  and  o  in  fate  and  obey  as  long,  and  those  of 
fat  and  object  as  short,  although,  in  these  examples,  the  quantity  does  not  differ. 
1* 


D  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

bon  and  English  drink  is  assigned,  so  that  the  reader  is  unable 
to  pronounce  with  certainty  the  numerous  words  represented 
by  this  character,  —  an  l  n '  the  second  line  of  which  is  pro- 
duced and  ends  like  'j.'  But  it  is  probable  that  neither  the 
French  nor  the  English  sound  occurs  uniformly,  for  in  the  al- 
lied Conzo  (each  o  as  in  not,  z  in  zeal)  the  reporter  has  heard 
both,  as  (to  use  German  characters)  in  hiing-ga  leggins,  with 
u  long  and  accented,  and  a  short  as  in  art.  The  French  sound 
occurs  in  the  Conzo  word  for  five,  which  is  the  English  sylla- 
ble saw  accented  and  followed  by  t  and  the  French  un,  as  if 
sawtun.  Using  lny  for  Mr.  Biggs's  letter,  the  Dacota  word 
for  leg-gins  is  huwska,  and  for  five,  zaptaw. 

Independently  of  the  errors  of  observation,  some  writers 
have  a  practice  of  referring  the  sounds  they  meet  with  to  those 
of  other  languages  which  they  may  know  from  description 
alone ;  and  some  proposers  of  general  alphabets  supply  such 
foreign  sounds  with  characters,  although  they  run  the  risk 
of  giving  different  characters  to  the  same  sound,  or  of  con- 
founding distinct  sounds.  An  English  alphabet-maker,  upon 
reading  that  the  Lenape  (lenape)  aborigines  use  a  whistle  in 
speech,  might  propose  a  character  for  it,  although  this  sound 
is  nothing  but  English  wh  before  a  consonant,  as  in  whte  heart 
(e  in  they),  its  occurrence  in  a  new  connection  conveying  an 
impression  analogous  to  that  which  a  new  sound  would  give. 
In  comparisons  of  sounds,  the  reader  should  be  informed 
whether  the  author  has  heard  those  he  uses  for  comparison, 
and  whether  his  opportunities  have  been  few  or  many.  Some 
sounds  can  be  accurately  described  to  those  unfamiliar  with 
them,  as  the  German  w,  Greek  phi,  English  th  in  thin,  then, 
Welsh  aspirate  //,  rh,  which  latter,  together  with  the  Oriental 
ghain  and  its  surd  cognate  (as  they  occur  in  Armenian)  the 
reporter  was  accustomed  to  pronounce  before  he  heard  them 
from  natives. 

The  alphabets  used  by  various  authors  will  give  a  good  idea 
of  the  state  of  our  knowledge  in  this  department,  except  that 
they  will  not  always  enable  us  to  establish  a  parallel  between 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  7 

them.  After  Rapp's  Physiologie  der  Sprache,  the  Essentials 
of  Phonetics  of  Mr.  A.  J.  Ellis,  A.  B.,  London,  1848,  may  be 
placed,  as  a  conscientious  and  valuable  contribution  to  the 
general  subject.  Being  printed  in  the  author's  alphabet,  its 
use  is  restricted  to  those  who  can  speak  English.  The  alpha- 
betic portion  of  this  treatise  is  so  corrupt,  that  it  ought  not  to 
be  used  for  any  language  ;  but  it  has  an  important  concession 
to  correct  scholarship,  in  the  use  of  Cay  (and  not  Kah)  as  the 
cognate  of  Gay. 

Castren's  Grammatik  der  Samojedischen  Sprachen  (St.  Pe- 
tersburg, 1854)  contains  a  careful  analysis  of  the  sounds  used. 
The  iotacized  (mouillees)  consonants,  or  those  followed,  and 
in  some  cases  modified,  by  the  guttural  cbalescent  approach- 
ing English  y  in  million,  are  seven  in  number,  /,  r,  n,  t,  d,  s, 
and  English  z,  marked  with  a  curved  line  through  the  stem 
(on  the  right  of  n,  d)  of  the  characters,  —  an  awkward  nota- 
tion requiring  too  many  distinct  characters.  Ellis  uses  (j)  de- 
prived of  its  upper  and  lower  dot  (as  in  lj,)  which  is  unexcep- 
tionable. The  peculiarity  of  these  compounds  is,  that  whilst 
they  commence  with  I,  &c,  the  tongue  passes  to  the  iotacism 
before  the  I  is  completed,  million  being  milyyon  when  thus 
iotacized,  which,  however,  is  not  essential  to  its  purity  as  an 
English  word.  A  soft  lisped  d  is  assigned  to  Lappish,  which 
is  allied  to  a  lisped  r.  The  latter  quality  seems  to  remove  it 
from  English  sonant  th  in  then.  This  curious  sound  should 
be  compared  with  the  peculiar  Irish  Z,  which  the  reporter  first 
noted  as  an  1-sound  mixed  with  sonant  thy  but  subsequently 
determined:  to  be  the  sonant  analogue  of  the  Welsh  surd  aspi- 
rate 11,  to  which  it  would  bear  the  same  relation  that  thy  bears 
to  thigh.  A  sound  between /and  h  is  mentioned,  —  probably 
Greek  phi;  and  a  consonant  between  I  and  r.  Castren  assigns 
a  peculiar  u  to  Ostiak,  and  the  Russian  vowel  bl  to  Samoiede. 
The  latter  (which  has  been  heard  by  the  reporter)  may  be  de- 
scribed as  a  long  and  short  vowel  akin  to  English  and  German 
i  in  still*  but  formed  with  a  more  open  aperture,  and  the  an- 

*  This  is  not  the  short  quantity  of  the  vowel  in  Jield,  and  cannot  be  correctly 
represented  by  (?)  of  the  Latin  and  Italian  alphabets. 


8  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OP  OUR 

gles  of  the  lips  drawn  back.  It  has  the  pinched  quality  of 
German  o  and  U,  but  without  the  pursed  lips  used  in  forming 
these  well-known  vowels. 

Bohtlingk  (Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten,  St.  Petersburg, 
1851)  mentions  a  nasal  of  the  German  J.  The  reporter* 
mentions  such  a  sound  as  present  in  Wyandot,  and  a  close  of 
the  glottis  ( marked  > )  which  has  since  been  observed  in  Chip- 
peway.  Judging  from  information  received  from  a  European 
who  had  resided  in  Syria,  this  "  close  of  the  glottis "  is  the 
Arabic  effect  termed  "  spiritus  lenis"  and  marked  (')  by  Lep- 
sius. 

Svunic  (in  German  letters  Schunjitsch,  an  Illyrian),  De 
Vera  Orthographia',  cum  Necessariis  Elementis  Alphabeti 
Universalis,  (Vienna?,  1853,)  admits  twelve  vowels,  which, 
with  marks  of  accent  and  length,  require  seventy-two  modi- 
fications of  vowel  characters.  He  supposes  that  these  twelve 
correspond  with  the  twelve  semitones  of  the  musical  scale,  a 
view  which  is  fundamentally  erroneous.  Of  the  consonants 
he  enumerates  fifty,  including  the  mouille  kind,  and  a  few  like 
tsy  tsh,  &c.  He  assigns  to  the  German  w  the  power  of  the 
English  w,  and  considers  German  b  in  haben  different  from  the 
ordinary  b,  his  informant  having  probably  been  a  provincial. 
He  omits  English  and  German  ng,  or  confounds  it  with  the 
French  nasal  vowels ;  and  his  notation  is  over-crowded  with 
diacritcal  marks. 

Poklukar  (probably  an  Illyrian)  published  a  pamphlet  at 
Laibach  in  1851,  entitled,  Ankiindigung  eines  nachst  zu  verof- 
fentlichenden  allgemeinen  lateinisch-slavischen,  zugleich  deut- 
schen,  franzosischen,  italienischen  und  eventuel  auch  eines  Uni- 
versal- oder  Welt-  Alphabetes,  &c.  He  confounds  German 
ng  in  lang  (Eng.  long)  with  French  n  in  loin;  and  French  v 
with  German  w.  His  notation  is  objectionable,  although  he 
starts  with  the  best  possible  rule  to  secure  correctness  and  final 

*  On  some  Points  of  Linguistic  Ethnology ;  with  Illustrations,  chiefly  from  the 
Aboriginal  Languages  of  North  America.  Proceedings  of  the  American  Academy. 
Cambridge  and  Boston.    October  2,  1849.    8vo. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  9 

uniformity,  by  preventing  each  author  from  being  influenced 
by  the  power  which  a  letter  may  happen  to  have  in  the  alpha- 
bet he  is  best  acquainted  with.  This  rule  requires  that  an  al- 
phabet should  not  contradict  the  Latin  original,  Latin  being  in 
some  sense  the  ( Weltsprache)  universal  language.  The  report- 
er's Elements  of  Latin  Pronunciation  (Philadelphia,  1851) 
grew  out  of  a  perception  that,  without  such  an  investigation, 
not  a  single  step  could  be  made  in  the  right  direction  towards 
a  general  alphabet,  the  construction  of  which  should  be  based 
rather  upon  scientific  principles  than  upon  the  vagaries  of  each 
individual  who  may  be  called  upon  to  write  a  language  for  the 
first  time.  Poklukar  uses  B,  F,  J,  and  other  letters,  correctly, 
but  by  a  false  assumption  he  uses  C  as  ts  (although  he  had 
already  a  t  and  an  s  in  his  alphabet!)  and  prefers  x  to  the 
Latin  Cay  or  Greek  Kappa. 

Among  the  latest  works  upon  the  subject*  is  Professor  Lep- 
sius's  Allgemeine  linguistische  Alphabet,  (Berlin,  1855,)  of 
which  there  is  an  English  version,  entitled,  "  Standard  Alpha- 
bet for  reducing  Unwritten  Languages  and  foreign  graphic 
Systems  to  a  uniform  Orthography  in  European  Letters,  &c." 
(London,  1855.)  The  profound  learning  of  the  author,  and 
the  use  he  has  made  of  his  alphabet  in  the  languages  of  Nubia 
and  Dar  Fur,  render  this  a  very  important  work.  It  has  been 
approved  by  the  Royal  Academy  of  Berlin,  which  has  had  the 
necessary  types  cut  to  give  the  system  publicity ;  and  many  of 
the  missionary  societies  have  adopted  it,  including  the  English 
"  Church  Missionary  Society,"  who  have  commenced  using  it 
in  the  works  of  the  Rev.  S.  W.  Kolle  on  the  languages  of 
West  Africa.  Professor  Lepsius  expresses  a  hope,  that,  in 
cases  where  missionaries  are  disposed  to  make  alterations  in 
his  notation,  "the  Committees  of  Societies  will  require  the 
reasons  of  such  deviations  to  be  laid  before  them  and  dis- 
cussed." 

*  Lauth's  Vollstflndige  Universal-Alphabet,  (Manchen,  1855,)  and  Professor  Max 

Mailer's  Languages  of  the  Seat  of  War  in  the  East with  an  Appendix  on  the 

Missionary  Alphabet,  —  have  not  yet  been  received. 


10  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

This  system  professes  to  have  a  physiological  basis,  and  the 
labors  of  the  eminent  physiologist,  Joh.  Miiller,  are  acknowl- 
edged in  this  field.  Mr.  Ellis  states  that,  in  Miiller's  account 
of  the  elements,  "  the  faults  of  a  German  ear  are  still  con- 
spicuous." Miiller  (Elements  of  Physiology,  English  edition, 
1848,  p.  1051)  does  not  understand  the  nature  of  his  own  J, 
which  he  supposes  a  sonant  German  ch,  as  English  z  is  a  so- 
nant s.  With  him,  m  is  not  a  labial  consonant,  and  he  does 
not  know  the  distinction  between  p  and  b.  He  considers  p  as 
having  an  aspirate  quality,  probably  because  an  aspirate  is 
made  after  it,  as  in  pronouncing  tap',  where  a  Chinese  would 
say  tap\  If  p  in  tap'  and  haphazard  is  to  be  named  an  aspi- 
rate from  the  phase  which  follows  it,  the  p  in  pay,  play  must 
be  a  vowel,  or  the  consonant  I.  If  the  t  in  boathook  is  an  as- 
pirate because  h  follows  it,  it  is  equally  an  aspirate  when  it 
precedes,  as  in  the  Iroquois  word  a'hta. 

Professor  Lepsius  says  that  in  adna  or  anda  we  pronounce 
"  only  half  the  n  and  half  the  d,  whilst  in  ana  and  ada  we 
pronounce  the  whole  of  n  and  dP  According  to  this  reason- 
ing, as  n  cuts  off  the  first  half  of  d  in  anda,  and  the  last  half 
in  adna,  both  halves  of  the  consonant  between  consonants 
must  be  lost  in  lend  not,  wends,  endless,  string,  warps,  and  in 
the  German  proper  names  Heindl,  Jondl,  Zarbl,  Birkl,  Schmolzl, 
Dietzsch,  &c. 

This  mode  of  regarding  a  consonant  position  and  a  vowel 
position  of  the  organs  as  in  a  manner  constituting  a  unitary 
element,  has  given  rise  to  alphabets  of  a  more  or  less  syllabic 
character,  like  the  Cherokee,  Ethiopic,  Hebrew,  and  Sanscrit ; 
and  the  system  of  Professor  Lepsius  is  heterogeneous  in  ad- 
mitting t  and  a  for  ta,  whilst  in  the  Hottentot  dental*  clack 
he  uses  but  one  character  for  the  consonant  position  of  the  or- 
gans (a  kind  of  t),  and  the  reverberation  which  follows  it  in 
the  cavity  of  the  mouth,  set  in  a  vowel  position. 

*  Mentioned  here  because  it  is  the  only  one  heard  from  a  native  by  the  reporter, 
who  has,  however,  heard  several  others  in  American  languages.  A  change  of  nota- 
tion is  required  to  distinguish  the  clacks  formed  by  sucking  in  air  from  those  in 
which  it  is  expelled. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  11 

Professor  Lepsius  considers  the  vowel  in  worth  as  "  inherent 
in  all  soft  fricative  consonants,"  such  as  English  v,  in  which 
there  is  indeed  sonancy,  but  no  vowel  power,  and  least  of  all 
one  requiring  such  open  organs  as  that  in  worth.  If  anything, 
the  supposed  inherent  vowel  in  English  v  is  German  ii. 

A  consonant  like  /,  r,  and  English  z,  may  have  the  organs 
so  little  closed  as  to  approach  the  vowel  quality,  and  in  this 
case  the  small  circle  placed  beneath  the  character  by  Dr.  Lep- 
sius is  a  good  mark.  But  he  uses  the  mark  with  n  and  m 
when  they  form  syllables,  although  in  these  cases  they  do  not 
differ  from  ordinary  m,  n.  Thus  if  z,  in  the  Chinese  word  tsz 
quoted  by  him,  is  English  z  following  s,  it  does  not  want  the 
mark.  In  English,  the  second  vowel  of  misses,  horses,  is  often 
omitted  in  hurried  or  careless  speech,  forming  the  dissyllables 
mi-sz,  hor-sz,  as  in  su-dn  (sudden),  pri-sm  (in  which  sm  have 
the  same  power  as  in  pri-smat-ic),  German  v'r-la-ss'n,  tfr-der-Vn. 
In  rare  cases  a  mark  of  syllabication  will  be  necessary,  as  in 
prairie,  often  pronounced  in  English  as  a  trisyllable,  with  or 
without  the  vowel  of  utter  in  the  first  syllable,  in  the  latter  case 
forming  pr-ai-rie. 

Professor  Lepsius  follows  the  English  in  admitting  an  "  in- 
distinct vowel  sound"  in  nation,  velvet,  &c.  This  is  the  vow- 
el of  worth  and  urn,  which  stands  on  the  throat  side  of  the 
vowel  scale,  opposite  to  awe  on  the  labial  side.  It  does  not 
yield  in  distinctness  to  any  of  the  vowels,  but  as  Latin  U  and 
V  (English  w)  and  I  and  J  are  allied,  so  the  vowel  in  urn  ap- 
proximates English  smooth  r,  and  coalesces  with  it.  Hence, 
if  a  person  pronounces  ramrod  (ra-mrod),  omitting  -od,  the  lis- 
tener accepts  the  remainder  ra-mr  as  rammer.  This  so-called 
"  indistinct  vowel "  is  doubtful  as  a  German  sound,  being  more 
probably  elided  in  lieWn,  &c,  as  it  sometimes  is  in  the  English 
words  nation,  theatr\  &c.  Its  resonance  may,  we  are  told,  be 
lost  "  by  partially  contracting  the  mouth,  or  even  closing  it  en- 
tirely. In  the  latter  case  it  is  heard  through  the  nose."  This 
supposed  vowel  is  the  consonant  m.  The  English  vowel  awe 
is  given  as  an  Italian  sound,  although  this  lies  between  awe 


12  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

and  oiue  (Ellis,  p.  20).  But  six  labial  consonants  are  admitted, 
p,  b,  m,f,  and  English  v  and  w,  no  mention  being  made  of  </>, 
Ellenic  /3,  nor  English  wh,  although  English  examples  are 
freely  cited,  and  the  number  of  English  consonants  stated  to 
be  twenty-two.  English  wh*  was  probably  supposed  to  be 
English  w  (Latin  v  in  qvinqve,  svavis,  &c.)  preceded  by  h,  an 
opinion  in  which  Professor  Lepsius  was  likely  to  be  seconded 
by  the  English  committee  which  he  met,  and  this  view  would 
probably  be  sustained  by  the  missionary  committees  to  whose 
decision  he  would  have  the  results  of  original  investigators  re- 
ferred, in  case  they  should  differ  from  the  views  laid  down  in 
the  Standard  Alphabet. 

If  such  grave  errors  can  take  place  with  the  labials,  the  or- 
gans of  which  can  be  seen  and  felt,  in  addition  to  the  sounds 
being  heard,  we  may  well  doubt  the  analysis  of  sounds  formed 
out  of  sight,  in  the  depths  of  the  fauces  ;  and  consequently, 
the  following  observations  are  open  to  correction.  Recalling 
the  admission  that  the  reporter  has  never  heard  Arabic  from  a 
native,  yet  he  is  vernacularly  familiar  with  the  German  smooth 
aspirate  or  spirant  of  gay  in  re'gen,  which  is  the  sonant  of  ch 
in  ich,  is  free  from  vibration,  and  belongs  to  the  cay  contact. 
The  Ellenic  *gamma  (judged  by  ear  from  native  sources)  be- 
longs to  the  same  contact,  is  made  with  a  similar  close  of  the 
organs,  but  has  the  addition  of  a  mild  vibration,  probably  due 
to  the  vibrant  action  of  the  edge,  and  not  the  body,  of  the  pal- 
atal veil.  The  French  r  grasseyee  is  probably  formed  by  the 
body  of  the  palatal  veil,  with  perhaps  little  or  no  contact  of  the 
tongue  and  palate,  wherein  it  would  differ  from  ^gamma. 

Some  of  the  Oriental  languages  have  a  contact  behind  that 
of  cay,  of  which  qof  may  be  considered  the  characteristic. 
Aspirating  qof  produces  a  faucal  qh  analogous  to  %,  and  when 
this  is  made  sonant  the  analogy  is  with  aspirate  gay.  Profes- 
sor Lepsius  considers  the  German  aspirate  g,  Ellenic  7,  and 

*  In  a  former  paper,  the  present  reporter  has  affirmed  that  no  orthoepist  known 
to  him  had  been  able  to  state  correctly  the  elements  which- occur  in  the  English 
word  when. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  13 

Armenian  ghad  identical,  and  of  course  represents  them  with 
the  same  character ;  and  the  surd  form  of  ghad  is  considered 
identical  with  ch  in  ich,  —  a  greater  error,  apparently,  than  to 
confound  cay  and  qof  or  the  Arabic  "  spiritus  lenis  n  ( ' )  of 
Lepsius,  with  Jain,  as  he  marks  it. 

Richardson,  in  his  Arabic  Dictionary,  says  of  ghain:  "  This 
letter  is  articulated  in  the  throat  with  a  vibration  producing  a 
sound  like  that  given  to  r  by  the  Northumbrians,  or  the  noise 
made  in  gargling.  ...  It  seems  to  bear  the  same  relation  to 
kh  as  b  to  p,"  —  i.  e.  the  relation  of  sonant  to  surd.  The  kh, 
he  states,  "  is  generated  by  a  gentle  vibration  in  the  throat "  ; 
consequently  it  is  not  the  Greek  nor  German  chi.  Sir  Wil- 
liam Jones  says  that  "  the  Persians  and  Arabs  pronounce 
their  ghain  with  a  bur  in  the  throat  and  a  tremulous  motion  of 
the  tongue,  as  in  making  the  rough  r " ;  —  and  according  to 
Svunic  its  surd  analogue  is  an  aspirate  "  qui  a  graeco  %  chi  in 
eo  difTert  quod  quasi  gargarizando  efferatur." 

These  two  vibrant  sounds  appear  in  the  following  Arme- 
nian words,  premising  that,  as  the  character  for  the  Armenian 
ghad  resembles  an  angular  "  2,"  this  will  be  used  for  it,  whilst 
£q  will  represent  the  surd  sound  ;  a  the  vowel  in  under,  e  that 
in  met ;  a  that  in  arm,  but  short  in  these  examples  ;  r  English 
sh;  c  as  k;  and  the  objectionable  character  z  as  in  English:  — 

dzndz2a',  a  cymbal;   ^qclc,  the  mind;  ^qatp,  a  crucifix; 
^Q^QaNTreL,  a  neigh. 

The  division  of  the  consonants  into  contacts  is  natural,  and 
was  appreciated  by  Aristotle,  the  Hebrew  Grammarians,  the 
Abbe  Sicard,  &c.  A  consonant  character  indicates  a  closing 
of  the  organs,  as  p,  t,  f,  whether  it  precedes  another  effect,  as 
in  fay,  play;  or  follows,  as  in  off,  or  does  both,  as  in  eft. 
Each  contact  is  subject  to  nearly  the  same  phases,  that  is,  if 
the  closed  lips  make  p,  the  tongue  will  make  t  and  its  base  k. 
Adding  sonancy  to  these  gives  b,  d,  gay;  open  the  nasal  pas- 
sage, and  these  become  m,  n,  ng.  Professor  Lepsius  divides 
the  phases  of  the  contacts  into  explosives  or  dividuce,  as  t,  d, 
2 


14  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

n ;  fricativce  or  continues,  as  s,  z ;  and  ancipites,  as  r,  /.  In 
the  labial  contact,  p,  b,  m  are  placed  as  explosives ;  /,  v,  w, 
(English)  as  fricatives,  without  any  ancipites ;  although  Eng- 
lish w  is  to  b  as  I  is  to  d,  and  English  y  to  gay.  Apparently 
to  accommodate  the  German  nomenclature,  voiceless  conso- 
nants, as  p,  f,  are  termed  fortis  instead  of  surd,  whilst  b  and 
English  v  are  termed  lenis  instead  of  sonant.  The  fricatives 
are  the  aspirates  of  other  authors,  whether  sonant  or  surd,  ex- 
cept with  those  who  think  "  sonant  aspirate "  contradictory, 
and  prefer  "  spirant "  for  such  elements  as  English  v,  z,  and  th 
in  then. 

English  w  and  y  (Latin  V,  J)  are  not  fricative  in  the  sense 
of/,  s,  %,  &c,  but  they  become  so  when  aspirated  in  the  words 
when  and  hue  or  hew,  the  initial  of  which  is  in  neither  case  h, 
as  many  suppose.  Writing  hue  in  Latin  letters  and  marking 
surd  by  (')  it  will  stand  "JJU  or  JhJU,  English  u  being 
normally  Latin  JU. 

Instead  of  twenty-two  u  simple  consonantal  sounds "  as- 
signed to  English  by  Professor  Lepsius,  the  following  may  be 
enumerated :  — 

Glottal. 


iabial. 

Dental. 

Palatal 

Guttural. 

W 

1 

r 

soldier 

y 

wh 

... 

... 

nature 

hue 

m 

n 

... 

... 

ng 

b 

d 

... 

... 

g 

...  V 

dh... 

z 

zh 

... 

P 

t 

... 

... 

k 

...  f 

th... 

s 

sh 

... 

To  these  twenty-six  might  be  added  an  r  (as  some  English 
people  use  both  a  rough  and  a  smooth  one),  and  mh  for  the 
English  and  German  exclamation  hm  (really  f/mm),  a  surd  as- 
pirate followed  by  pure  m.  This  aspirate  is  sometimes  re- 
placed by  r/n  (found  in  Cherokee)  and  *'ng.  See  Rapp,  Vol. 
II.,  middle  of  p.  267,  and  Vol.  I.  p.  166,  note. 

It  is  here  intended  to  assign  to  the  English  word  nature  a 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  15 

surd,  and  to  soldier  a  sonant  effect,  allied  to  y  in  ye,  you,  but 
made  at  the  post-palatal  point,  and  constituting  the  liquids  of 
which  zh  and  sh  are  the  aspirate  mutes,  and  into  which  they 
are  apt  to  fall,  just  as  r  may  fall  into  s  or  z,  or  w  into  v  or  /. 
Hence  nature  is  often  natsh'r,  as  soldier  is  soldzh'r.  In  the 
mouille  effect,  the  modified  y  is  not  only  drawn  forward  to  the 
palatal  position,  but  when  it  follows  a  dental,  this  often  recedes 
to  meet  it,  even  when  the  double  effect  has  become  t-sh,  that  is 
to  say,  in  order  to  bring  t  nearer  to  y,  or  to  sh,  it  is  often  drawn 
back  from  the  teeth,  and  the  point  placed  against  the  base  of 
the  lower  teeth  as  a  fulcrum.* 

The  notation  of  the  "  Standard  Alphabet "  is  defective, 
whilst  tendencies  towards  uniformity  are  not  fostered  by  its 
third  and  fourth  rules,  which  do  not  regard  the  purpose  for 
which  a  given  character  was  invented.    The  four  rules  are :  — 

I.  Every  simple  sound  ought  to  be  represented  by  a  simple 
sign. 

II.  Different  sounds  are  not  to  be  expressed  by  one  and  the 
same  sign. 

III.  Those  European  characters  which  have  a  different  value 
in  the  principal  European  alphabets,  are  not  to  be  admitted 
into  a  general  alphabet. 

IV.  Explosive  letters  are  not  to  be  used  to  express  fricative 
sounds,  and  vice  versa. 

The  first  two  rules  are  proper,  the  others  are  exceptionable. 
The  first  is  broken  by  its  proposer  in  assigning  a  simple  char- 
acter for  the  contact  and  the  subsequent  resonance  of  the 
Hottentot  clacks.  The  second  is  broken  by  representing  the 
English  combination  t-sh  partly  by  t  and  the  character  for  sh 
(p.  55),  and  partly  (as  in  Arabic  and  Persian)  by  k  surmount- 

*  When  the  iotacism  follows  a  labial  or  guttural,  it  can  scarcely  be  called  a 
mouille  effect,  although  it  is  so  considered  in  the  Slavonic  languages.  The  t  and  d 
thus  drawn  back  to  a  slight  extent  in  the  English  t-sh  and  d-zh,  would  require  little 
to  place  them  among  the  palatals,  when  the  t  would  be  the  lenis  of  s,  and  the  d  of 
z,  or,  if  nasalized,  it  would  form  a  sound  between  n  and  ng,  perhaps  the  Sanscrit 
palatal  na. 


16  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

ed  by  an  accentual.  In  Mpongwe  (p.  57)  this  kf  stands  for 
English  ty,  and  on  p.  42  if  is  assigned  to  ty  in  case  it  should 
be  required.  Hence,  in  his  alphabets  of  Kua  and  Herero  (p. 
57)  we  do  not  know  whether  k'  means  tsh,  ty,  or  even  ky. 

By  Rule  III.  c,  ch9j,  x,  are  excluded,  and  most  of  the  char- 
acters might  have  been  got  rid  of  by  the  same  unphilosophical 
process.  If  in  the  course  of  time  the  measures  of  the  French 
metre  should  become  shortened,  partly  by  the  abrasion  incident 
to  use,  and  partly  by  the  file  of  avaricious  dealers,  whilst  other 
dealers,  with  a  higher  appreciation  of  strict  accuracy,  would 
preserve  their  measures  at  the  standard  value,  —  if,  under  such 
circumstances,  the  government  were  to  enforce  uniformity,  those 
who  had  allowed  their  standard  to  deteriorate  would  be  clam- 
orous for  the  retention  of  their  own,  as  the  best  known.  Strict 
justice  would  require  that  the  original  metre  should  be  restored, 
although  none  but  a  few  just  traders  might  have  it  in  use. 

Notwithstanding  the  nations  of  Europe  have  faithfully  pre- 
served the  vowel  characters,  even  to  the  y  (German  ii)  of  the 
Danes  and  Swedes,*  there  are  several  alphabets  of  English 
origin,  which  (simulating  the  weights  and  measures  of  certain 
dealers)  fall  so  far  short  of  the  standard  that  every  vowel  char- 
acter, even  to  that  of  O,  has  false  powers  assigned  to  it,  the 
opinions  and  practice  of  those  being  disregarded  who  had  for 
ages  kept  their  standard  pure.f  No  sophistry  should  induce  a 
Danish  missionary  to  pervert  a  letter  (Y)  belonging  to,  and 
made  for,  a  labial  vowel,  to  the  power  of  a  guttural  consonant. 
Philologically,  it  is  worse  than  assigning  to  Latin,  German, 
Polish,  &c.  J,  the  power  of  English  w.  Let  Latin  '  V '  have 
its  vowel  power  in  ooze, i  P  that  in  believe,  and  '  Y'  that  of 
the  French  pinched  u  (which  bears  equal  relations  to  this  V 

*  Besides  the  correct  use  of  Y,  the  orthography  of  the  Danish  word  "  havn,"  a 
haven,  (rhyming  with  town,)  is  strictly  Latin. 

t  Some  English  authors  have  gone  so  far  as  to  assign  to  Anglish  cay  the  power 
of  tsh,  as  if  to  flatter  superficial  readers  with  a  greater  resemblance  to  English. 
Were  this  view  true,  the  English  words  broken,  kernel,  ache,  and  kin,  would  be 
older  than  the  Anglish  brocen,  cirnel,  ece,  and  cynn,  Irish  cine. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  17 

and  I),  when  we  may  account  for  the  form  of  '  Y '  by  the  fol- 
lowing diagram  of  the  affinities  of  the  vowels :  — 

0      v 


A 


Y. 

E       L 


The  rule  which  rejects  C  should  not  retain  its  cognate  G, 
and  that  which  assigns  to  the  latter  its  original,  standard  pow- 
er in  get,  give,  should  have  retained  C  (or  at  least  a  character 
like  k  deprived  of  its  stem)  with  its  Latin,  Gaelic,  Welsh,  and 
Anglish  power,  as  Mr.  Ellis  has  done.  '  C  (aided  by  '  Q,') 
is  the  normal  character  for  cay  in  the  Romanic  languages ;  and 
the  Latin,  German,  &c.  ch  is  a  concession  that,  if  '  ch '  repre- 
sents the  aspirate  %,  '  C '  without  the  aspirate  mark  h  must 
normally  represent  its  lenis  form  cay.  l  C '  is  rejected  by  Rule 
III.,  on  account  of  its  many  perversions,  although  still  used 
correctly  in  several  languages,  whilst  '  Z,'  with  as  many  per- 
versions, is  improperly  retained  with  a  corrupt  power.  Its 
powers  are  as  follows:  —  1.  Ancient  Greek,  as  English  zd;  2. 
Italian  dz  (and  ts) ;  3.  German  ts ;  4.  English  in  azure ;  5. 
As  s  in  Hungarian  and  Danish,  and  the  German  c  tz ' ;  6.  Its 
French  power ;  7.  Its  Spanish  power. 

The  normal  character  for  the  sonant  s  in  rose,  misery,  is  s, 
in  German,  French,  Italian,  and  English ;  and  as  the  Latin 
mode  of  distinguishing  sonant  from  surd  is  seen  in  G,  C,  the 
sonant  '  s '  should  have  ended  in  some  similar  manner,  as  by 
a  comma  point.  In  writing,  this  would  degenerate  into  some- 
thing like  the  numeral  sign  '  3,'  a  form  which  is  used  in  Rus- 
sian for  English  z,  constituting  a  very  suitable  letter.  Never- 
theless, the  adaptability  of  a  Z  rounded  into  a  reversed  S 
should  be  considered. 

As  English  sh  belongs  to  a  different  contact  from  s,  it  should 
not  be  represented  by  a  pointed  f  s,'  nor  French  j  by  a  point- 
ed '  mf  such  a  mode  being  as  unphilosophical  as  to  represent 
%  by  a  pointed  sh,  or  th  by  a  pointed  /.  The  character  r  (but 
not  /"with  its  dot  and  curve  below  to  be  written  with  the  stem 
of  script  /  and  the  tail  of  y,  like  the  German  script  h)  was 


18  ON  THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  OUR 

proposed  by  Volney  for  sh,  and  has  been  used  to  some  extent. 
For  French  j,  the  Wallachian  form  is  probably  the  best,  being 
somewhat  like  (j)  inverted  '  f,'  with  a  curved  line  through  the 
stem,  sloped  in  the  direction  of  the  acute  accentual.  Some 
such  characters  are  necessary,  the  paucity  of  aspirate  conso- 
nant characters  in  the  Roman  alphabet  being  admitted. 

Rule  IV.  is  probably  based  upon  forms  like  <th'  for  the 
Greek  theta,  —  a  false  notation  for  this  sound,  because  theta  is 
not  an  aspirate  of  t,  but  a  member  of  a  different  contact,  so 
that  to  render  theta  lenis  (0)  it  would  be  a  kind  of  t  formed 
between  the  teeth;  and  truly  to  aspirate  t  (et)  would  be  to 
form  a  sound  strictly  at  the  t  contact,  with  a  quality  between 
the  aspirates  0  and  s.  Similarly,  *s  would  be  s  deprived  of  as- 
piration, forming  a  kind  of  t  posterior  to  the  normal  t. 

The  use  made  by  Dr.  Lepsius  of  (0)  for  the  surd  consonant 
of  thigh  is  unexceptionable,  but  as  he  wants  a  character  for 
the  sonant  of  thy*  he  wavers  between  $  and  S,  proposing  at 
the  same  time  (?  for  0 )  thus  establishing  a  complete  confusion 
in  the  use  of  the  Greek  spiritus  asper  and  lenis  marks.  In  & 
an  aspirate  mark  is  added  to  that  which  is  already  aspirate, 
that  surd  may  be  understood ;  and  in  ff  the  lenis  mark  indi- 
cates that  vocality  has  been  added,  not  to  0%  but  to  an  imagi- 
nary 0.  In  h*  the  aspiration  of  the  Arabic  hha  is  enforced, 
although  the  Ethiopic  character  (A)  was  present  in  an  invert- 
ed Greek  ^-character,  which  would  recall  the  European  idea 
of  hh.  The  (%)  with  postposited  (')  is  given  for  Arabic  ghain 
and  Ellenic  gamma,  although  (%')  ought  to  mean  k.  In  this 
notation  (f )  would  mean  /;  (f)  English  v;-\  and  (s')  Eng- 
lish z. 

*  That  of  Mr.  Ellis  formed  on  a  (d)  basis  is  probably  the  best,  — or  rather  its 
later  form  in  the  English  phonetic  journals. 

t  There  should  be  a  rule  to  the  effect  that,  When  a  character  is  perverted  from  its 
original  power,  its  form  should  show  the  variation.  Hence,  if  prejudice,  or  ignorance 
of  Latin  speech,  should  prevent  a  missionary  from  using  (V)  with  its  Latin  conso- 
nant power,  it  should  be  marked  to  indicate  its  corrupt  English  power.  Perhaps 
(y)  might  answer,  or  a  break  towards  the  left,  in  the  left  branch,  like  that  of  italic 
k.    This  would  remove  the  confusion  between  r  and  v  in  writing. 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY.  19 

To  accommodate  Sanscrit  writing,  Professor  Lepsius  uses 
(p)  for  p  and  h  in  uphold,  although  all  that  was  necessary  was 
a  statement  of  the  fact  that,  in  the  Sanscrit  alphabet,  the  se- 
quents  ph,  bh,  &c.  (as  well  as  a  consonant  and  vowel  in  some 
cases)  are  supplied  by  a  single  character ;  a  statement  of  this 
kind  being  considered  sufficient  in  regard  to  ps  having  a  single 
character  in  the  Greek  form  of  ellipsis.  But  whilst  the  spirit- 
us  asper  and  lenis  marks  are  used  in  these  heterogeneous  and 
unauthorized  modes,  the  former  is  used  as  a  separate  charac- 
ter for  Arabic  and  Hebrew  'alef.  This  is  at  least  a  doubtful 
view  of  the  Greek  spiritus  lenis.  As  applied  to  a  consonant, 
we  see  it  in  apprjv,  male  (and  apcryv,  because  the  surd  aspirates 
rh  and  s*  are  allied),  and  Dr.  Lepsius  admits  an  (f)  with  a 
Greek  key-word,  and  he  would  probably  write  the  Welsh  rh 
thus.  As  applied  to  a  vowel,  Chavee  (Lexiologie  Indo-euro- 
peenne,  p.  18),  with  great  probability,  explains  the  Greek  spir- 
itus lenis  as  the  slight  breath  which  precedes  an  initial  vowel ; 
for  as  the  vibration  of  the  vocal  ligaments  is  due  to  the  pass- 
ing air,  a  little  must  necessarily  pass  before  their  quiescent 
state  can  be  changed. 

Professor  Lepsius  uses  the  acute  accentual  (')f  over  (A;)  for 
tsh;  over  (%)  to  distinguish  the  German  ch  in  ich  from  that 
in  ach;  after  (/),  &c.  to  denote  the  mouille  effect ;  and  in  (7') 
the  Welsh  surd  aspirate  /,  for  some  unexplained  reason.  To 
English  sh  and  zh  are  assigned  s  and  z  surmounted  by  the  (w) 
mark  for  short  quantity,  —  a  perversion  of  a  well-known  mark, 
required,  with  the  mark  of  length  (as  in  Dacota  s  and  sh, 
Riggs,  pp.  184,  188),  to  distinguish  long  and  short  continuous 

*  But  Dr.  Latham,  English  Language,  1841,  considers  s  the  lenis  of  sh.  He 
omits  A,  wh,  ng,  rh,  from  his  System  of  Consonants,  p.  112,  and  he  considers  the 
mutes  specifically  distinct  to  be  no  more  than  sixteen.  To  these  add  his  "  Semi- 
vowels, to,  y,"  and  "Liquids,  m,  n,  I,  r,"  n  being  given  as  the  liquid  of  t,  d;  and  Z, 
of  h  9- 

t  As  an  accent  mark,  this  should  be  thick  above,  and  for  the  secondary  accent 
thicker  below.  If  used  for  other  purposes,  it  should  be  of  equal  thickness.  Used 
with  ( " )  for  sonant  and  surd,  the  middle  part  should  be  cut  away  to  give  the  ap- 
pearance of  two  dots  in  sloped  directions. 


20  PRESENT    STATE    OF    LINGUISTIC    ETHNOLOGY. 

consonants  in  some  languages.  S  is  thus  prolonged  in  hissing. 
"  The  people  of  Mallicollo  use  R  in  many  words,  two  or  three 
being  frequently  joined  together They  express  their  ad- 
miration by  hissing  like  a  goose."     (Cook's  Second  Voyage.) 

A  dot  is  used  over  (n)  by  Lepsius,  for  English  and  German 
ng,  which  is  equivalent  to  representing  n  with  a  dotted  m-char- 
acter.  Consistency  should  have  required  this  dot  to  be  ("), 
because  both  indicate  that  the  marked  letter  belongs  to  a  pos- 
terior contact.  Ellis's  character  is  much  better,  —  an  w-charao 
ter  with  the  second  limb  ending  like  (/).  As  a  capital  (and 
capitals  are  of  doubtful  utility)  that  of  Riggs  is  a  good  one, 
being  (N)  with  the  diagonal  shaped  like  a  sloped  (J.)  As  a 
dot  is  the  slightest  of  marks,  it  should  be  used  (below  the  let- 
ters) to  indicate  those  slight  evanescent  consonants  and  vowels 
which  occur  in  some  languages. 

Rule  IV.,  although  it  cannot  be  called  unphilosophical,  would 
deprive  us  of  a  well-known  and  exceedingly  definite  mode  of 
notation  with  the  aid  of  ('  '),  and  obviate  the  necessity  for 
many  new  characters  in  the  course  of  linguistic  discovery. 
By  first  assuming  that  I  and  r  are  "  fricatives,"  Professor  Lep- 
sius admits  (')  with  Z,  r,  but  denies  it  to  n,  m,  as  "  explosives," 
without  providing  a  means  to  indicate  the  same  phenomenon  in  the 
latter  case.  Sjogren  (Ossetische  Sprachlehre,  St.  Petersburg, 
1844)  has  a  good  notation  for  the  aspirates.  He  uses  the 
Russian  alphabet  for  a  basis,  and  instead  of  the  ordinary  A, 
he  curves  the  end  towards  the  left  below  the  line,  in  the  shape 
of  (a),  then  uses  this  appendage  as  the  indicator  of  aspiration 
and  spiration,  by  adding  it  to  the  stem  of  the  Russian  charac- 
ters for  p,  t,  g,  and  k,  curving  the  last  line  of  h  backwards. 
For  English  dz  he  uses  J3,  which  is  unnecessary,  as  the  z 
character  should  appear  fully,  if  the  sound  exists.  Lepsius 
(p.  69)  seems  inclined  to  approve  of  this  mode  of  writing  ts , 
&c.  Such  forms  should  be  left  for  the  concurrent  emission  of 
consonants  formed  simultaneously  (Rapp,  I.  84).  Thus  a 
child  learning  to  speak  formed  I  by  applying  the  tongue  to 
the  upper  lip,  and  passing  the  voice  over  the  lower  lip,  produ- 
cing a  sound  having  the  quality  of  I  and  7>. 


14  DAY  USE 

RBnmNTODBSKBROMWHXCHBORKOWBD 

IOAN  DEPT. 

29Jul'65DP 

— sec^-t^. 


LD  2lA-60m-3  '6=5 
(F2336sl0)476B 


General  Library 

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